


The Once and Future Queen

by Settledvagabond



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-04-30 02:34:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5147081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settledvagabond/pseuds/Settledvagabond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What are we doing?"</p>
<p>"I don't know."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Storybrooke proper had always had a faint whisper of underlying unease, unspoken and as peripheral as a barely perceptible pebble in the bottom of a shoe, a subtext of anxiety that the inhabitants could feel, though they never spoke it to each other, and thus each one felt it alone and to be alone in it.  

On the outskirts of Storybrooke, this feeling became ever more pronounced - the deeper into the forest, the deeper the weighty mist of discomfort breathed thick smoke in one’s chest.  And for those already burdened by steel in the heart, it took mere steps into the damp undergrowth of Storybrooke’s woods to quell all calm and unlock fear in the remote chambers of the self.

She only needed to come a few feet from that forest for Regina to shiver and pall at her misdeeds, remembrances spurred on by every shadow, every whisper through hollows branches, every crack of brittle leaves, like hearts crushed callously and casually in innumerable rages.

This was made infinitely, achingly worse by the innocent and sure heart currently beating against her back.

Robin slept on in the deep, comforted sleep of ignorance - and purity of intention.  Even in his betrayal of his wife, Regina had noted how he felt he was “doing what was just” - she was his True Love, and this justified all.

All it did for Regina was keep her up at night.

Marian dead.  Zelena with child.  Emma…

A shiver not at all from the cold whipped over her.  She was still warmly dressed - fully dressed, in her curt business suit.  Funny how her style had barely softened from being the Mayor - as if she had nothing between full Evil Queen regalia and Modern Politician.  Small concessions had been made, in the form of attempts at jeans or things that didn’t button up, but they always left her itching and pulling at things.  A Queen dressed formally in any world.  She hadn’t even bothered to change, slipping easily into Robin’s embrace as he rolled over silently and took her into his arms with unconscious certainty Regina envied.  Had she ever done anything so totally and trustingly - even with Daniel?  Had she not doubted even his affections at times?

Had she ever been the Fool, totally in love, as Robin was?

The air around the tent picked up, howling around the enchantments Regina had put in place.  It was strange, feeling the tense and pull of the air at her magic - the only magic she felt in the town anymore, now that Rumple wasn’t the Dark One, and Zelena wore the cuff.  Except...

Emma’s.  Emma’s was different.  She didn’t feel it, tangibly, externally, the way she did any other magic user’s.  No, this should could almost taste, like the bite of bitter wine in the back of her throat, of hot coffee at her lips.  It was deeper than felt, it was in her, of her - she didn’t know how to parse it, or stop it, only noticing it had crept up in her marrow like frost on the inside of a window’s frail glass after it was too late to stop it.  Emma Swan was, for the former Evil Queen, becoming a problem in more ways than the town understood or could imagined.

Remnants of her dug their way into Regina’s being, curling into her greedily, leaving their residue in her skin, invisibly.  The tendrils of Emma’s dark magic bit into Regina even now, hours after their exchange in the Dark One’s “home”.  Regina scoffed quietly even thinking the word.  That place wasn’t a home - it was all for show, all of it was for show, from the house to the hair, to the new wardrobe.  Regina wouldn’t have been surprised if Emma suddenly showed up driving some European car - or worse, a motorcycle.  

 **** _Like a bad issue of Vogue Italia_ , Regina mused, with forced congratulations at her own clever remark.

“Ugh,” Regina groaned aloud, unable to not roll her eyes at the thought.  She winced when the slight sound caused Robin’s brow to furrow in his sleep with concern, as if, even in his dreams, he could sense Regina’s unrest.  Worried now that she was keeping him awake, somehow putting off pulses of “True Love in Danger” magic unconsciously towards him with her unspecific, wandering anxiety, Regina decided she had better take a walk.

Regina’s footsteps - heeled, ridiculously, but she couldn’t wear anything else at this point, she was so used to them - echoed with crisp rebounds off all surfaces of the town center.  Just being there in the always-threatening-to-rain quiet made her feel less uneasy and simultaneously as if she were being inexorably pulled somewhere by the dark current of the night around her.  If Regina Mills hated anything, it was feeling that she was being controlled.

She hadn’t even meant to go down this block, but there she was - standing outside of Emma Swan’s house like some sort of… love lorn teen.

Regina’s lip curled up in disgust at her mind’s immediate and unconscious comparison.  Better to say stalker or guardian.  Neither title sat any less ill.  She shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, shivering in the cold, wondering why she hadn’t just enacted a spell to keep her warm before she got here, now that she couldn’t use magic without risking Emma -

“Looking for something?”

Regina might have had excellent control over her reactions, but she couldn’t completely stop her body - or The Dark One’s extraordinary senses.  She might not have actually jumped when Emma’s whisper ghosted against her throat, but the rise of gooseflesh across her skin and the sudden escalation in her heart rate were all the Dark One needed to elicit a chuckle from deep in her chest.  How such a dark sound came from such a lithe body…

“Yeah.  That drink you said I owe you.”

Regina turned with wine bottle materializing in hand out of a quickly dying cough of purple smoke, hoping that the turn of wit would make up for the obvious and foolish lack in her defenses, but it suddenly occurred to her that if Swan had wanted to hurt her, she would have.  She could have.  The reality of that was incredibly uncomfortable and made the flesh roil under Regina’s skin, like rabbits shivering in the presence of a predator.  It was also something else, something Regina declined to consciously note: it was exciting.  Not many people could threaten her anymore, even with revenge.  The smile that turned up the corner of the Dark One’s slash of scarlet did little to quell the image of Emma as lion, or softly undulating snake, swaying back and forth in Regina’s vision.

Emma stepped forward, the glare of a streetlight bouncing up from the rain-wet street to strike her face.  She visibly attempted to control the speed of her movement as she reached to take the bottle from Regina’s hand, a familiar swirl of dizzying magic turning the cold street into a whirl of black and then the Dark One’s kitchen.  A hesitation, and then lights flickered on - in deference to her comfort, Regina assumed, rather than necessity.  She wondered where the Dark One suddenly learned manners.

“I don’t assume you’re as afraid of me as the others, but I still find that a little light can… make even the darkest things seem less frightening,” Emma said, as if - possibly, actually - in response to Regina’s idle thought.  Her back faced Regina for a moment as she reached, quite humanly and unnecessarily, into the very mortal and unnecessarily cabinets that held real glasses, drawers with real bottle openers and no doubt all manner of household necessities.  Why put on the act? thought Regina.  She tried not to think too loud, to shake off how thrown she felt, with little success.  She was kidding herself to think that the Dark One didn’t notice the too-hard swallow and nervously short nod in response to the wine glass she offered, or the shallow inhale and shaking exhale before the first taste.

Regina’s free hand gripped the cold marble kitchen island, grasping at the icy sensation in the hopes that it would bring her back to reality.  As the sharp sting of the tart wine landed on the tip of her tongue, Regina’s relief was too palpable.  Everything felt _too too too_ …

“Regina.”

Her eyes snapped open at Emma’s bemused voice.  She hadn’t even realized she’d closed them.

Emma’s eyes were fresh and light suddenly, unlike Regina had seen them since they’d woken into the new curse.  It was unnerving and made her want to cry at the same time.

Emma noticed.

“Hey - relax,” she said, starting to reach her hand out for a moment as if to touch Regina, but thinking better of it before the impulse could fully extend her arm.  Her eyes flickered to the floor.  First Henry, then Killian - now Regina.  She didn’t feel good about this, this inability to simply interact with anyone in normal ways, made even worse by the imposter complex she had developed since fully embracing being “The Dark One”.  Even with the powers, as real as her own heartbeat, she felt like a fraud.

Not a new feeling for Emma.

It took only reminding herself what “normal” had been like for her, what it had cost, for the seizing around her heart to become lax. The Dark One would happily pay the price of mortal discomfort a million lifetimes over to not be the simpering fool she’d been.  But there was something she still was, inescapably, as Emma Swan, Orphan, Emma Swan, Savior, Emma Swan - Dark One.

Lonely.

Regina was saying something about the camp, being unable to sleep, sharing something surprisingly deep about the ghosts of her past - it was still strange and taking some getting used to, being able to be in her thoughts and still there in the moment at the same time.  Emma eased herself back into presence, like gently breaking water in a dive.

“You don’t have to apologize for coming to see me Regina,” she said, pouring more wine.  She felt nothing, distant as she was from her human body - but she knew Regina might.  Or did she only get magical hangovers now?

“And you don’t need to make up a reason for coming to see me, either.”

Emma watched as her inhuman sight picked up the colouring of Regina’s cheeks.  God, such a beautiful colour, she mused.  An earthy rose sort of colour.

****_What is wrong with you._

“That’s a far cry from what you were saying earlier today,” Regina remarked, downing another swallow of wine.  She was exercising extraordinarily little concern for her safety with “The Dark One”, but she knew if Emma wanted to hurt her, she would have.  That was the odd thing about revenge - with which Regina had great familiarity: if it was to be savoured, if it was a long game, then she had plenty of time.  Emma wouldn’t waste true punishment on simple drunken pain.  She would be more clever, more patient, more _interesting_ …  Or else she had learned nothing at all from the Evil Queen.

Regina, licking her lips, suddenly hoped Emma had learned more from her former self, a self that seemed more and more distant, than a good wardrobe.

“Hey, easy there,” Emma was suddenly saying, her cold hand cradling Regina’s around her glass.  She hadn’t even noticed she’d eased nearly a quarter a bottle down her flexing throat in less than a moment’s time.

Regina woke to the moment to feel Emma’s concern fixed on her.

“Oh don’t look at me like that, you’re supposed to be The Dark One, remember?”

She scoffed and tilted her head back to vanish the last of the glass.  Her voice was bold and mocking but she felt none of her tone’s bravado.

She didn’t even notice Emma was still holding her hand until she realized she was shivering.

“Regina,” Emma said gently, interlacing their fingers, her voice all softness as down feathers, cutting a vicious swathe through Regina’s chest as it sounded, reminiscent of Swan’s former, kinder days.  Regina held the wine in her mouth a while longer than necessary, holding it, the taste curt in her mouth, to delay having to speak.  She did not look at Emma.

Emma watched the tears begin to fill Regina’s eyes - and felt them kiss her own.

She slid closer to Regina, unaware of what she was really doing.

“Why did you come here?” she asked, already knowing the answer, and already feeling frozen and falling.  A human snowflake.  Unique and pointless, significant only when massed with so many others.  She hated herself for wanting to comfort her, and at the same time radiated a warmth that was so loathe to that other part of her that she thought she might melt herself before she fully reached Regina.

But she waited, a reasonable distance, that could be easily excused - by the dark hour, by the wine, by being The Dark One, until and if Regina invited otherwise.

Regina breathed in and out unsteadily.

“Emma…”

Regina turned, using the connection of their hands to pull Emma closer, til their bodies were pressed together like a breath and wind, indistinguishable, yet separate.  Her face naturally inclined east, chin deigning to rest on Emma’s shoulder.  She exhaled immensely.  

It was so inevitable.

They rested in the silence, Emma’s heart still and hard - Regina’s quiet and relenting.

“What are we doing,” Regina whispered, pulling her bottom lip in to worry at with her teeth, biting until she worried she would taste blood.  

Emma’s eyes filled with incomprehensible tears.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.

One hand came to rest on Regina’s shoulder, pushing her away slightly.  Emma’s hand pressed into Regina’s shoulder with a minimal weight, though serious and questioning.  Regina looked her full in the face, gulping back a gasp, their eyes sharing what their minds would not dare to know.

Regina looked nowhere but Emma’s mouth.  Emma looked her fully over as a breath parted her lips.

And they fell - fell forward, fell into each other, fell into whatever this was, would be, had always, always, inevitably but deniably been.  Emma’s bright-blood mouth and Regina’s wine-slick lips, meeting as two hands arranged about each other, as comfortably as a bird in its nest - and Emma inhaled.  Regina sighed.

“Regina,” Emma breathed warning when they parted.

Regina inhaled sharply assumed bravery.

“This mockery of a home has a bedroom, doesn’t it?”

Her tear-bleary vision flooded with black smoke and white light.

There was no going back.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the comments - I'm pleased to share this new chapter, and hope it will not be as long before the next. To be filling a gap I feel so desperately needed is satisfying and a pleasure for me.

There’s a certain strangeness to magic that only a practiced user completely understands.  It’s a little like falling a long distance, like leaping from a plane - the first time you do it, it’s such a rush, the world whipping by in what seems like less than a heartbeat, that it seems to blur together in an instant, a wash of indiscernible and inseparable colour.  But once repeated, time begins to slow down.  The fighter begins to see the punch as it comes, the skydiver to count each fraction of an inch as they fall from the sky. 

Much like magic.

Emma hadn’t been doing it long enough (or with enough purpose and control) to notice it before, but now that she was The Dark One, things slowed down by virtue of her new powers.  Now when she teleported herself, she saw every molecule disperse into the darkness, watched with passive fascination as every muscle and bone reformed.  She could see herself dismantled and thrown to the wind like ashes, only to coalesce like sifted metal in water.

Transporting with someone else, on the other hand, was a bit more complicated.

She’d done it before, most recently with Hook, watching his unremarkable atoms become dust and flow like smog from being into non-being, slipping through the spaces in reality (really, these realms were so riddled with inconsistencies and holes, she was surprised to see how little she had really noticed, when fully human).  It was like that transporting herself, Hook, or anyone else - except Regina.

As soon as they began to dissolve, she felt it, the strange warmth that had been absent since she had become The Dark One.  Emma’s eyes searched for Regina’s in the mortally imperceptible instant between “here” and “not here”, and in the agonizingly slowed down moment, Regina’s dark eyelashes snapped upward.

Had she felt it too?  Could she feel it now?

Like an ocean sweeping them into an irresistible undertow, the vanishing spell pulled them out of their present place, their very essence becoming nothing more than particles - even this, Emma was used to, but still it was not the same. 

Regina looked at their intertwined hands as they faded away, and regarded Emma with wonder as they entered the inbetween.

Gold.  Emma’s hands were bright and glowing gold.  And Regina’s…

What does someone call something between being and not being, between thought and voice?  Something that has no sound, no physical manifestation, but is still perceived?  Like the old, oft jokingly said, “If a tree falls in the forest…?”.

If a woman glows red, and another glows gold, and neither had eyes in true form to see it, was it real?

If a woman gasps in awe at the beauty of brilliant crimson and precious yellow particles, dancing amongst each other like stardust and planets in distant galaxies, but she has no lungs with which to breath that sharp inhale, has she really tasted that warmth like an unknown sensation hitting the tongue, filling the mouth, and swelling an unfelt belly?

If eyes sting tears that are only a memory, can a woman held herself to have cried over the most beautiful thing she has ever not seen?

And just like that, all marvel and angelic chorus, far from any reality anyone else has ever known, Emma and Regina were returned to mortal plane, their hands still intertwined, their breathing newly laboured.

Neither moved, not for a long time.  The dark room echoed silence, their breathing the only sound, shallow and tinged with more fear than hope.  They stayed as close to each other as they dared, as if a forcefield kept them from moving farther apart or closer still.

Regina’s eyes were on Emma’s lips, Emma’s on Regina’s heaving, barely-subdued breathing.

“What,” Regina began, licking her lips and breathing in headily through her nose, “the hell was that?”

Emma did not look away from the uneven rise and fall of Regina’s chest beneath her wine-coloured blazer.  Regina’s throat flexed as she swallowed, her teeth dragging across her dark lips.

“I’m not sure,” Emma eventually, and absently, answered.  She leaned in slightly, as if to reach Regina’s lips, but stopped, and sighed.  “But I think we both know, some part of us has always known.”  She leaned closer to Regina, til they were pressed against each other, cheek to cheek.

“I think we just don’t want to admit it.”

Regina’s next series of breaths were sharp, panicked - Emma slipped her arms around her and for once Regina did not protest, pulling Emma in tightly and harshly, her grip so heavy and iron that it would have restricted Emma’s breathing, had she had any need for that.   Regina’s hands, palms that had cradled hearts, fingers that had whispered magic over throats to hand them to the King of Death, those hands scratched and pulled the Dark One’s hair until the tight bun began to unravel - Emma wished it free, and her long golden curls fell down her back in waves, some still tangled around Regina’s clutching fingers.  Regina buried herself in Emma’s throat, the silence of her ever-slower heartbeat both terrifying and reassuring.

Regina’s lips ghosted against that pulse-less skin as she asked, pitifully,

“What are we going to do?”

Emma breathed in to speak and exhaled with no clarity.  She hadn’t the slightest idea what they should do, not first, not last, not outside of this room.  She tilted her head back, holding Regina in her arms.  She felt the weight of her, and of her own fragility - she had grown worryingly slender in her time leading up to becoming the Dark One, and she retained that frailness in her present form.  Regina, in her superfluous skirt suit and blazer, still felt thicker, more real, more tangible, than Emma did.  Nothing about this felt real.  Nothing but Regina.  As Emma  gazed up at the a-framed ceiling, staring at the single, white dream catcher at the apex of the beams, she felt less real than ever.

Her entire plan was falling apart before her eyes.  If Killian wasn’t her true love… what was all of this for?

Regina needed an answer.  Even with her ability to phase out of normal time, Emma couldn’t keep her waiting long.  The former evil queen was bound to recover from this stable girl moment, and she would choose action even if Emma didn’t agree.  Regina swallowed, her grip easing slightly.  She had perhaps three more seconds.

Regina pushed back and started to stand up.  One hand laid, fingertips splayed, over Emma’s chest.  She inhaled and exhaled a reluctant breath.  Her nose wrinkled, her eyes narrowing slightly.

Something was wrong.  And not usual, “there’s-always-something”, wrong.

With the slightest of pressure, Regina did exactly what Emma was unsurprised to find her do - removed Emma’s beating heart.

What neither of them expected, however, was what it would look like.

Even in the strange, blue-white light of this uppermost room, illuminated only by a pale moon and the weak edges of street lights, the heart did not look as it should.  Streams of red and white - and yes, streams of black - but in Regina’s flexed, manicured hand, another - strands of gold.  

Regina regarded the heart nervously, the gold like snakes in her hand.

“What is that?” she asked, not needing to clarify which she meant.  Emma’s head titled slightly to one side, her expression mild and curious; she said nothing.

Regina held out her hand, and pressed the other through her own chest - she did not totally suppress a grunt at the pain.

“Red,” she said, holding the heart out, knowing what she would find before she even saw it.  She held both hearts, palms up, in front of Emma, and realized slowly what she had just done.  Quite literally… her heart was in her hands.

And she was holding it out to The Dark One.

Regina swallowed, but could not hide the slightest movement in her fingers as some part of her wished to pull back her hand, and put her heart back in safety.  Emma watched the slight twitch in slow motion, and her eyes washed up Regina’s arm to her fearful - and oddly apologetic - face.

“I’m not going to - “

“I know,” Regina said curtly, though she looked down dejectedly.  Her arms were still outstretched, even as they began to burn.

Emma exhaled quietly through her nose, both amused and angry.  That this was possible, that this was a true part of Regina - this terrified little girl holding out her heart - both touched and disturbed her.  In the open attic room, every uneven breath groaned in the floorboards beneath Regina.  Her face, which Emma was sure was flushed with embarrassment, was hidden in her newly long hair.  Against her own better judgement and instinct, she fought her very nature to hold her heart out to Emma - to what?  To prove to her at that she wasn’t afraid, that she wasn’t like the others?  That she believed, especially in light or in spite of what they had just seen, what they were both realizing, that Emma wouldn’t hurt her?

That she trusted Emma, like Emma had believed in her - without proof, without reason, without justification - only on faith… and perhaps something more?

Emma’s empty chest clenched around the feeling that reached her throat and which she swallowed down.  Her heeled shoes clicked just one stride - and she tried to ignore the faint flinch of Regina’s body when she moved closer.

Her long, white fingers reached out and caressed the flesh of Regina’s heart.

Regina’s whole body tensed - and then, surprisingly, relaxed.

And then it changed - the heart, the moment, everything.  The red and black of Regina’s heart suddenly bloomed, like smoke and blood, into an even brighter red, separate from the heart itself - and in turn, almost as if in response, the heart in the opposite hand grew brighter, the gold quickening, birds chasing each other in the sky across Regina’s palms.

Emma gasped - Regina looked up sharply.

“What?” she asked, her expression fearful, her tone panicked.  She tried to stretch the hearts further from her body like they were suddenly aflame.  “What’s wrong with them?”

Emma’s eyes were hooded, her gaze on the hearts in Regina’s uneasy hands.  Regina found herself looking only at Emma, not daring to glance at the light in her hands, reflected like firelight in Emma’s eyes.

As Emma watched the hearts, with what Regina thought was, oddly, delight, Regina tried to suppress her panic.  As moments went by without any reaction from Emma, Regina searched for something to calm herself, too terrified to look in her hands and attempt to come to a conclusion herself.  She found her attention finally and naturally called to the room.  Emma had brought them to… the attic?

There was a bed in center of the large, airy topmost room of the house, and sparse furnishings otherwise: a chest at the foot of the bed, a modest wardrobe against a far wall.  Nothing to say that the Dark One lived here, let alone Emma Swan.  There was something quiet and odd about the space, something rural and innocent, almost simple.  Like it had been chosen and put together by a girl imagining the room she might have as an adult, and when given the ability to do so, hadn’t enough imagination to fill the space.

Regina’s eyes roamed the room, and with nothing to claim her attention in the grey-washed space, eventually looked up.  She squinted.  Emma felt her focus change like a shark senses movement in the water.

“Is that - “

“Yes, it is.”

Regina lowered her chin to look at Emma, whose features had not changed, and yet she looked totally different.  There was a distance to her expression, a hollow coldness in her eyes, that even the flickering light of the hearts in Regina’s hands could not illuminate.  Her hair had wound itself back up like Medusa’s serpents into the frost of before.

“Emma?”

Regina’s voice was cautious and tinged with sadness - Regina sensed something she hadn't felt in years: the tautness of magic in the air before something goes terribly, terribly wrong.  There was only one person she ever felt that with before, only one person that could make Regina shrink back in fear, and that person was long dead now.

With a flick of Emma's wrists, Regina felt the weight of the two hearts leave her hands.  She watched almost against her will as they floated and raised, circling each other so that, had she not known the distinct differences in them, she might not have known which was which.  Gold and black and red, and red and black and so, so very red - they floated slowly, almost comically, almost sinisterly.  Regina watched as Emma’s fingers moved slowly, her expression dreamlike.

How Emma looked at her without Regina noticing, with her eyes right on her, Regina could not understand completely.  It was not a comforting feeling.

Just the corner of Emma’s lips curled up, in what might have been meant to be a comforting smile, but it had nothing of the bumbling charm of the Emma Swan she had met on her front stone path all those years ago.  It was a pale attempt at the light and life that Regina had once known.

“Hey, hey…”

Emma came closer, the slowly dancing hearts lowering themselves into her waiting hands.  She pressed Regina’s easily and gracefully through her chest, as gently and painlessly as Regina had ever known the act, and eased her own through the shining scales of her own armor.  Once placed away, Emma reached the hand on her own heart up to wipe at the tears Regina hadn't even felt begin to fall.

“What is it?” Emma asked, softly and with concern.  Her fingers slid through tears and across the vastness of Regina’s cheek, to come and hold her chin, her nails lightly stroking the side of Regina’s face. She brought her forehead against Regina’s, much more confidently now, and Regina did not know how she could feel so at ease so immediately.  Her own breathing was shallow, and the tears came with a latent fury that her emotions did not bend to her will.

She was still  _her_ , she was still that girl, she had been all those now decades gone by.  She was still just as afraid of Emma, of this, as she had been of her mother - and she felt a mix of tenderness, disappointment, and rage for which she had no name and floundered to handle, wordlessly, pointlessly.

“Emma,” she could only manage, and gripped the Dark One’s forearm as she came closer.  

“Shh,” Emma whispered, sliding her face, cat-like, along Regina’s jaw line.  She brought her close.

“Come with me.”

Emma stepped back, her right hand trailing down Regina’s arm til her fingers caught Regina’s in hers.  She stepped back towards the bed, her eyes kind.

“I need you to trust me, Regina.”

 

 


End file.
